If you need to sell your home, but the rooms are very small, you are going to have to be brutal – especially if you are still living in the home! The house I am using as an example is an extreme case, as it was one of the most narrow properties I have worked with, but it demonstrates the the “less is more” theory perfectly, even if you wouldn’t need to be quite so extreme in your own home.
Here are some guidelines:
1) Take photographs of the rooms first.
You may find this very difficult, as you can’t step back very far before there is a wall in the way. Try leaning through windows etc.
This will enable you to see the room through fresh eyes, and show how it will appear on the estate agents’ website.
This was a very small, narrow bedroom, so I could see that I had to use plenty of tricks to add as much visual space as I could:
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2) Analyse the photographs
You need to view all the photographs side-by-side when you’re trying to sell your home, to see if the house flows nicely from one room into another. Can you see a clear room use? What is the focal point of each photo? It should be a bed, or a fireplace, or something special – not a bike in the hall, a big toy car in the dining room, a pile of clutter in the bath…
3) Act on the photograph analysis
Remove everything from the room that doesn’t look good. Re-arrange furniture, change lighting etc
Accept that if your rooms are small, you may even need to lose some furniture, to make the room appear larger. This will mean even less storage space, so you may have to pack some items away that you won’t be needing for a few months, to accommodate this. If you don’t have extra storage space, you may need to rent some whilst you sell your home. It will be worth it, as you will have a much better chance of selling a ‘problem’ house.
From the photograph above, I knew I had to remove the mess, move the furniture around, and lighten the scheme. Here is the result:
4) Keep taking new photographs
Take photographs again, and anaylse them. Keep making changes until you have a layout that you are happy with. Now you just have to keep it like that!
Here are photos of the rest of the house:
NB. The furniture was really kept to a minimum in the above house, and it wasn’t actually being lived in at this stage (it had previously been rented, and was now empty). But I wanted to demonstrate how big you can make a small room appear, by de-cluttering and removing any excess items.
Call me if you need help with a similar project…
Lynn Pick (Home Stylers Ltd)
Tel 01509 551392 www.homemakeoverservice.co.uk
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